In praise of Donna Berzatto

The Bear's mother is better than she seems (spoilers!)

This week I discussed The Feminine Mystique with Anna Stoecklein on her podcast, The Story of Woman. Check it out here, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I know The Bear seasons 1-2 on Hulu (and Disney+ in the UK) has been out for a while, so many will have already watched to the end. Please share your takes on it. And if you haven’t watched, spoilers are ahead.

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“I hate myself for saying this, but that show is very triggering for me,” I tell some of my sisters during a Sunday group call.

We’re talking about The Bear. I don’t want to be one of those people who overuse the word “triggering,” but in this case it truly does apply. And not just for the chaotic restaurant kitchen scenes. But let’s start with those. By my informal polling, anyone who has worked in a restaurant will be overcome with a familiar panic when watching the first few episodes, where absolutely everything goes wrong in the kitchen of a beloved hole-in-the-wall sandwich shop in Chicago.

The oldest four of us sisters worked in diners, bars and chain restaurants from the age of fourteen. Vanessa carried on until her mid-thirties. I finally gave it up after I paid off my credit card debt from my summer abroad, three long years after graduating from college. Gina bartended until she had her first kid, and Jess refused to return to Bob Evans the second she finished school. The camaraderie – but also the anxiety and exhaustion – portrayed on the hit show are not unfamiliar to us. If these were the only triggers on the show, I could probably bear it.

But the other one is a lot more insidious. It’s Carmy’s mother, Donna.

https://the-bear.fandom.com/wiki/Donna_Berzatto

Played by Jamie Lee Curtis, she isn’t listed on the IMDB cast list, and doesn’t actually appear until halfway through season two, for just two episodes. But her narcissism and neglect weighs on Carmy and his sister Natalie brilliantly from episode one. Carmy is a mess. His brother recently committed suicide, and he is plagued with something like PTSD, resulting from working for a head chef who appears to be the worst person in the world. Carmy is twitchy, smokes like a chimney, and avoids all emotional connection. Natalie is more well-adjusted, but that’s only because she’s the fixer. If you’re a fixer, you already know, you look like the one who has it together, but that’s only because you’re too busy helping everyone else to resolve their own demons. Natalie hassles Carmy to talk to her and begs him to go to AA. When he finally relents, her face is the picture of relief. She has saved one brother, for now.

Until S2:E6, Donna Berzatto is invisible, but her impact is deafening. It makes me squirm. When she finally appears it’s almost a relief. This is the thing that is so deeply uncomfortable. This is why I relate to but despise these characters. They are me. That kind of dysfunction seeps into every part of your life. Sure, I know the misery and elation that’s possible working in a restaurant, but I also know what it’s like to have a mother who is there one minute, gone the next. Whose love is conditional, and the conditions are a mystery.

We can only guess at what’s wrong with Donna, at what makes her a “bad” mother. There are hints at alcoholism and definite signs of mental illness. When we meet her in a flashback, she’s cooking the Feast of the Seven Fishes. There are people we know and people we don’t know crowding the house, all attending Christmas family dinner. Even friends are family in this house. Richie is the ne’er-do-well who calls all the Berzattos “Cousin,” and they do the same in return. It might be the most repeated word on the show, and it is grating until it’s not.

The kitchen is a catastrophe, Natalie surreptitiously empties bottles of wine into the sink, and Carmy – a renowned chef – is unable to follow Donna’s convoluted oven planning. We know these meals are always stressful to prepare, but this is deliberately on another level. Donna demands help and refuses it in interludes. She glugs from a wine glass. She cries. She screams. She is a victim and a martyr in a tornado of her own making. Nearly the entire episode is too loud and too fast. The camera zooms in on faces and cuts quickly from one thing to the next. It is stressful to watch, and I assume this is by design.

I won’t (further) spoil the episode. But things don’t improve. The next time Donna appears is when the new and improved restaurant hosts Friends and Family night. As they prepare to open (S2:E9), everyone is tense, and Natalie tells Carmy: Also, I invited Mom.

You invited Mom?

Yeah. It's Friends and Family.

Friends and Family is also not an exact science, Sug.

I don't want you to freak out if you see her.

I don't want you to freak out if you don't.

Is family the woman who birthed you but makes your life miserable? Is family “cousin” Richie who shares no blood but never goes away? Carmy and Natalie have different opinions, and these opinions inform their entire personalities. He knows he can’t be close to his mother, for his own well-being, but he also thinks that means he can’t be close to anyone. Natalie is fearful and optimistic. She clings to the label, but she is also happily married. Maybe she needs to believe in family.

So as Friends and Family night unspools, Natalie watches the door. She wants her mother to want to come. She wants to want her mother to come. And when she has to step away to help in the kitchen, her husband Pete spots Donna outside, smoking.

And this is where Donna redeems herself. She shows a glimmer of self-awareness. She comes, because she wants to be the proud mom. But when Pete goes out to get her, she tells him to go back inside, and to not tell anyone she was there. She can’t take it.

What do you mean you can't take it? Pete asks.

I love them so much. I don't know how to show it. I don't know how to say I'm sorry. So, please, just...Please just go in and just tell me it's okay.

Donna is a proud mom. But she recognizes that she won’t make anything better inside. She does what’s best for her kids -- even if it hurts her. Maybe Natalie will be sad her mother didn’t come, but Donna’s absence is less painful than her presence. She could have made a scene outside, let Pete tell them she was there but couldn’t stay, that she was too ashamed. But instead she leaves quietly. She finally does something selfless, and that’s the way to apologize for a lifetime of mistakes: don’t cause any more damage; change your behavior. And if you can’t do that, stay away.

In Donna’s final scene, I am nothing but impressed with her maternal skills.